Another First in the UK — The UK has had an outsized cultural impact on the world. From music to sports to literature... and now - MMS with Twitter. — Today, not only has Orange UK turned on Twitter SMS, but it has added a first-of-its-kind special enhancement.

Respected developers begin fleeing from App Store platform — Apple's control over the App Store—which seems arbitrary at times—still frustrates developers. That much isn't a surprise, but some developers have become frustrated to the point that they have decided to simply halt iPhone development altogether.

iPhone Apps Have to Be Approved by Robots Now, Too — Sounds sinister, right? That's probably because I replaced the word “computers” with “robots!” For effect! But no, still, this is at least insteresting: Developers are now reporting that apps are getting rejected, and not by humans.

A new look for Google Translate — Today, we've launched three new features as well as a new look and feel for Google Translate — a service that helps people access information throughout the world by enabling them to automatically translate text and and web pages into their own language.

Apple's Black Friday deals leaked? — One of our connects just hit us up with some intriguing Apple information. According to them, what you see detailed above is a shot of Apple's yearly Black Friday deals. It's reported to be something Apple will email out shortly.

An update to Google Earth for the iPhone — Just over one year ago, we unveiled Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch. Google Earth quickly became one of the most popular applications in the App Store, and after only six months, was the second most-downloaded free application overall.

Online Maps: Everyman Offers New Directions — SAN FRANCISCO — They don't know it, but people who use Google's online maps may be getting directions from Richard Hintz. — Mr. Hintz, a 62-year-old engineer who lives in Berkeley, Calif., has tweaked the locations of more than 200 business listings …

Templates now available in Google Sites — I'm pleased to announce we just added a stocked gallery of site templates in Google Sites. Anyone can browse the public template gallery, and businesses using Google Apps each have a private area where employees can share site templates with coworkers.

The Pirate Bay Tracker Shuts Down for Good — In the fall of 2003, a group of friends from Sweden decided to launch a BitTorrent tracker named ‘The Pirate Bay’. It soon became one of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet, coordinating the downloads of more than 25 million peers at its height.

MySpace Close To Acquiring iMeem — MySpace is in late stage negotiations to acquire music streaming service iMeem, we've confirmed from multiple sources. MySpace is on a bit of an acquisition spree - they acquired iLike, another music service, three months ago.

Google's Sample Chrome Extensions Are Already Working — As we noted last night, Google looks to be on the verge of unleashing Chrome extension support in a major way. Not only does the home tab page on the new builds of Chromium (and the dev builds of Chrome) feature not-yet-turned-on links …

Facebook Integration With PS3 Becomes Official — This evening, Sony officially announced support for Facebook on the Playstation 3. While integration was first rumored last week, there is now an official video of the Facebook features which we've embedded below.

Times editor outlines plans for online charging — Micro-payments dismissed in favour of charging for 24-hour access to day's edition of the paper — James Harding, the editor of the Times, today gave the clearest indication yet of how News International is going to start charging for its journalism online.

Jimmy Wales: AP's ‘Landing Pages’ a Good, if Late, Idea — Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, is not really in the news business. Yet, as the Associated Press noted in an internal document earlier this year, the two organizations do compete for readers when news breaks. — RELATED

Windows Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 — After last week's news, I'm pleased to tell you that Windows Marketplace for Mobile has today reached another major milestone by adding support for Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 devices. This is an especially proud day for Microsoft because it marks …

First Beta of Weave Sync add-on now available — We are excited to announce the first Beta release of the Weave Sync add-on. You can download it here. Once you have installed and connected, Weave Sync enables you to take your Firefox experience with you on your laptop, desktop and mobile devices.

Dell Streak MID landing 2010 on AT&T claims paper — Having been spotted in prototype form last month, Dell's Streak MID has received another shot of intrigue with Chinese rumor-monger Commercial Times claiming knowledge of both a manufacturer and a US carrier partner.

Microsoft to Open Source the .NET Micro Framework — I have great news to announce. Today, at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) here in Los Angeles, we announced not only the release of version 4. of the.NET Micro Framework, but also that we are open sourcing the product …

PSD2 Compliance in Zoho Books — The Revised Payment Services Directive, also known as the PSD2, is a set of regulatory guidelines laid down by the European Union (EU) for finance, banking, and payment service companies.

Google Fi - a phone plan, by Google — We felt that most phone plans just weren't made with you in mind. So that's why we built Google Fi with features that real people actually want. Click to learn more.